


Your Light, Blinding

by SunshineMoon (CaptainSpace)



Category: Kamen Rider Gaim
Genre: M/M, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 06:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12788943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainSpace/pseuds/SunshineMoon
Summary: Ryouma, at the end, recounts his memories of Takatora.





	Your Light, Blinding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemonenergy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonenergy/gifts).



The words here are not exactly right. Not quite like you said them. The feeling is there, but the details fade with time. I hate that. I wish I could say I had an eidetic memory. You’d expect it, right? Alas. It’s such a pain, taking physical notes.

 

I don’t think I ever told you, but you’re the only one who knows I do that. Those little meanders where I go completely off-track dreaming about things that could be but aren’t. Normally I don’t let them become verbal. They’re such fleeting little thoughts, they don’t feel safe out there exposed to the world. Except when you’re there.

 

 

* * *

 

 

I wish I could show you my first sight of you. I’ve tried to express the impression it left on me so many times in so many ways but for all that I am I am not an artist. Others might disagree but I tell you that art is more than beauty, and beauty is all I can manage. Worlds live or die on my whim and yet I lack that ability to convey the essence of thought in all its purity, and I’m left scratching a crude impression of my reverence into every one of my creations.

 

I will try. I swear, if you only could see yourself the way I have always seen you you would value yourself more. I will try.

 

I was annoyed at first. I saw you but I didn’t _see_ you. _My_ office is just that. I thought everyone knew. So I wasn’t dealing with a person yet, just an intrusion.

 

Like I said, I can’t recall the exact words, but the moment itself is forever crystallised. You liked my work. You didn’t just tolerate it. You were _fascinated_ . Then you were human and _that_ was my first sight of you. I instantly took in the sculpt of your face; powerful but kind. Noble is a good word, for it and for the way you carried yourself. A little too at ease whatever the situation, I came to notice, but admirable. A figure easy to get lost in.

 

In my memory, your half of that first conversation went something like:

 

“This is what you’ve been working on, right?”

 

“I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s exactly what we need.”

 

“Yes, really. This will be perfect for exploring and surviving the new world. You may have just saved us single-handedly, Sengoku.”

 

“These will open the path to the future.”

 

Again, that’s not exactly how it happened but that’s the version my memory has constructed. It might be a combination of two or three actual conversations. It conveys the impression I got, is the point. The feeling I left that encounter with, that buoyed me through the coming weeks of work almost without sleep.

 

Looking back, you sure said all that pretty casually, didn’t you? Did you have _any_ idea what you did?

 

 

* * *

 

 

But this was before you shattered my dreams. Those were the best days. You’d stop by all the time to check on my progress, to hear whatever new impossibility had crossed my mind, to make sure I had everything I needed. Or did you just want to see me? It’s hard to imagine someone as driven and self-controlled as you making such folly, whatever your true feelings. But I suppose it isn’t impossible, especially back then.

 

The grandeur of Yggdrasil seemed to grow with that of the project, the real world shaping itself to match my ambitions. That’s the kind of power you have. The world follows after you. I was riding the slipstream and loving it. I relished being the odd one out at meetings; everyone in their suits with endless administrative reports (I still don’t know how you ever kept your cool with them for hours on end) while I sat at one end in my shorts hunched over my pre-lunch dessert, asking for your opinion on the banana sword I’d designed that morning. The looks they shot me gave me such joy. Sowing confusion and rapidly cultivating it into animosity seems to be a special skill of mine, even when I try to be sociable, so I’ve learned to love it.

 

Understand, though, that despite my flippancy I really did put everything into what I built. The jokes and showmanship are just how I express myself. Catchy fruit jingles for the soldiers of the future, and a little ego-stroking for myself. All but you. Your system I am deadly serious about. This whole suit design business is outside of my comfort zone, but I did my utmost to make you beautiful. And every time you went into battle I had my faith in you broadcast to the world. Or did you think “Authorised by Providence” was some indecipherable joke? It was as honest and straightforward as I’ve ever been.

 

A lot of good it did me in the end.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Anyway, what’s done is done (and your fault). I was obsessed, you know. I do tend to fixate, but I think I was justified. Those early days were so thrilling. I was working towards the godhood I’d envisioned and someone finally shared that vision.

 

Well.

 

You didn’t really, did you? We both saw a new world but not the same one. You wanted to take them with us. I’ll never understand it. I offered you divinity and you broke it into pieces and handed it out to the dirty, grasping crowd.

 

Yet if it wasn’t for that damned nobility I don’t think I’d have fallen for you in the first place. (Wonderful paradox, isn’t it?) It’s in the way you carry yourself. You’re so much better than them. They don’t deserve you.

 

I tried to tell you, really. Connecting to people is hard. I don’t know how everyone does it, there’s too much muddy ineffability. But I tried to tell you that you don’t owe them anything. You must have known what you did when you rejected me. Those were not innocent words—I refuse to believe that. Because the alternative is that you never understood me from the start, and I cannot even entertain the notion.

 

_Quantity over quality. This is for everyone._

 

No it _isn’t_. It was for you! A world of gods and monsters was coming, and you passed up the chance to rule it. The culmination of my work, years and years of all that I am, and you threw it back in my face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

I don’t believe in fate, careful planning notwithstanding. But for a conspiracy within Yggdrasil to reveal itself right as I was starting to feel lost, to add to the whisper in my mind suggesting we move forward without you—it was as if I had called them into being.

 

None of them interested me the way you did, of course. Sid never grew beyond what he was when I dragged him off the street. That was the whole point, but it didn’t make him any less of a bore to interact with. Should’ve predicted his greed would outgrow his paycheck eventually, but he was so dull I couldn’t bring myself to pay proper attention to him.

 

Typical conversation:

 

“Hey man. Gonna need you to increase production. They’re eating up Lockseeds like candy out there.”

 

“Don’t come in and just...touch me, all right?”

 

“Aren’t you grabbing people all the time? Friendly pat hello, that’s all.”

 

“Don’t.”

 

“All _right_ , but I need you to—”

 

“Yes! All right! If you leave me alone I will see about increasing production!”

 

“Okay, okay. I’ll be going...bit early for cake, no?”

 

“Food is food. Get _out_.”

 

Minato I had a little more respect for than most, but she seemed determined to squander what potential she had. I could’ve told her she wasn’t suited to subservience, but I don’t suppose she’d have listened. Wasn’t my business, anyway.

 

Typical conversation:

 

“How did it go?”

 

“Smooth in and out, they never knew I was there. Already sent you the file.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Mm.”

 

“...do you ever feel like these conversations are too...impersonal?”

 

“This _is_ a corporation.”

 

“You’ll be going now.”

 

“Yes, I will.”

 

“Don’t agree with me!”

 

“Good day, Professor.”

 

What does someone like that do for fun?

 

And as for our final recruit...he never appreciated what I did. For all his talk of power, he couldn’t recognise the real thing. Typical conve—ah, haha, no. I think we spoke three or four times ever, and I won’t subject myself to recalling them.

 

And of course they thought I was with them all the way. They were looking out for a second layer of deception, but there was no such thing to see—I never changed course from the start. That they lacked the vision to see it was their problem.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s not like I never regretted my decision to leave you behind. I’ve always wished it could have been different. But you gave me no choice. You _know_ this is all your fault. Even if sometimes it seemed like things could work between us, like all that cult nonsense. I’ve never felt the spark between us stronger than those few minutes. It’s an uncomfortable reminder of my base humanity how all my doubts dropped away in the single moment I was in your arms. My desires should be purer than that, shouldn’t they? Especially towards the one I meant to deify. But what a _feeling!_

 

Yet it was, after all, only a moment. In retrospect, you were salving the wound and twisting the knife at the same time. How quick you were to act so friendly again, like nothing had happened between us. Did you think you could give no ground, acquiesce nothing, ignore my vision and everything I’d laid out for you and expect things to be the same? I suppose so, for some reason I’ll never understand.

 

Well, I’ve been dancing around it for a while. I didn’t just take all this I’ve been railing at lying down. Conspiracies can only boil away for so long before they bubble over.

 

I hope you appreciate how hard what I did was. But when there’s no value left in something, when it’s just weighing you down...what was I supposed to do? Ever onwards, ever upwards. Pull the trigger.

 

If I could say I had some great crisis of faith, or fell into a spiral of depression after we got rid of you—or even in the moment I held that notched arrow—I suppose I would be a better person. But a lesser one. ‘Good’ has never interested me as much as ‘great’.

 

Oh well. Can’t say I didn’t give the whole ‘sharing’ thing a try.

 

 

* * *

 

 

How was it without you, you might wonder. Although I know you’d be asking about the, you know, factual state of things. Not how _I’ve_ been doing. Not through any malice, I suppose, but out of that damned altruism. It’s not that you don’t care for me, but you can’t let yourself hold anyone up above the rest, which is exactly what I need from you—and if not what I _am_ at least give what I _do_ its due…

 

The more I think about it, the more I feel like as long as you had some great evil to throw yourself at for justice and mankind and all that baggage, as inexorably as we are drawn together we’re fated to never quite meet in the middle.

 

But! I did it. I moved on. I threw myself back into the work without you, and _really_ got the momentum going. To the point when I heard you were alive, it barely broke my stride. I barely had time to process it before you were gone again. In my defence, I had an apocalypse to run. I can be forgiven for a little tunnel vision. There’s a lot I didn’t notice or foresee, in those last days. For instance that _damned_ fool…

 

No, no, think clearly. A non-fatal version of _that_ encounter would have been a learning experience. A reminder to step up my game, with the rate everyone seemed to be advancing beyond my creations. So incredibly crude, though, using the Helheim fruit—even _that_ fruit—directly. That’s not a finished product, that’s a raw natural resource and barely a fragment of what I could do with it, with proper time and—

 

There I go again. Could-haves. It feels odd to go off-track and talk about others in this, this remembrance of you, but life felt just as incomplete for the lack of you. I got on with it, but of course there was a level I never stopped wishing you could’ve been smarter on. We could’ve had the world.

 

 

* * *

 

 

So here we are one more time, once-beloved. And what cruel irony! I’ve never been farther from my original research—but never closer to godhood! I’m part of such a magnificent system now. Megahex will subsume all worlds, all life, will become all that is. The others don’t have to be fully integrated like me, they can be grist for the machine, but _you!_

 

You can join me. I’m giving you one more chance to make up for everything you ruined. I know it was in your nature. I can put it all behind—you’re worth it. You can still join me in the infinite. What have you got left in this world? You’re just living in the ruins of your life. To turn me down, you’d have to be as stupid as...well, as you were before when you chose the shambling masses. Or as stupid as me, falling for you all over again at the first sight of you.

 

I will claim divinity, Takatora, hand in hand with you or over your corpse. So choose, and if you have a single bit of sense in that glorious, insufferable head, choose me.

 

Please.


End file.
